Sunday, July 17, 2011

Green Alpaca Wrap Sweater

Wow. What a whirlwind of a couple of weeks. I moved out of my apartment in Cambridge. Headed up to Vermont for the Fourth. Moved back to Arizona in the midst of a monstrous duststorm. Fled to the Sierra for a few days of restorative backpacking. There's much to reflect and catch up on .... first, a cool dose from that Vermont weekend ....

So serene and beautiful. Wish I were still there, swimming in the silky lake water and basking in the greenness.

Speaking of greenness, I finished that alpaca wrap sweater while I was there. There was no pattern (I just made it up as I went along). But you can discern the construction when it's flat like this: top-down seamless raglan with subtle waist and shoulder shaping.

The shoulder shaping is something I made up to make the top-down raglan look more tailored. After dividing the yoke into the shoulder and body sections, I start slight decreases at the shoulder crest. It's very similar to how I decrease for the waist: I add in a {ssk, k5, k2tog} at the center of the shoulder every 6 rows. It gives a little convex curve to the shoulder and upper arm and makes for a slimmer arm overall.

After knitting, I edged the entire sweater in various crochet stitches -- single crochet around the neck and front edges to keep it from rolling, double crochet at the sleeve hems, and a bold triple crochet at the bottom.

The wrap was engineered into the sweater, enabled by a small slit in one side for a waist tie to come through.

The tie just comes around the back and ties on the other side. That was my sister's clever idea, so that the front of the sweater keeps its clean look.

I'm very happy with how it came out in the end. It's eminently wearable (although, sadly, I didn't get any good pictures of me actually wearing it). And it's just my color. Matches the moss of the forest floor splendidly!

It's been a long journey with this sweater, both geographically (started in Joshua Tree, knit on trips to Arizona and Tahquitz and DC, finished in Vermont) and knittingly (my "improvisational design" had all kinds of issues and needed to be unraveled halfway at one point).

Ah, nice to be done with that. Nice to have an accomplishment. And now on to the next adventures....

Lovely design! I've toyed with the idea of a wrap sweater myself. You've inspired me to try it. I like the idea of of the top-down construction. Would love to see a photo of you wearing it. Eager to read of your next adventures.